After PetaPixel reported on Friday that Stability AI, the makers of AI image generator Stable Diffusion, were in trouble, CEO Emad Mostaque stepped down on Saturday.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Mostaque said he was resigning to pursue his goal of decentralized artificial intelligence and that it was his decision to stand down — noting that he remains the majority shareholder.
Not going to beat centralized AI with more centralized AI.
All in on #DecentralizedAI
Lots more 🔜 https://t.co/SbEF5zoo05
— Emad acc/acc (@EMostaque) March 23, 2024
However, there have been reports of chaos at Stability AI with three researchers who developed the core Stable Diffusion model leaving the company recently. Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, and Dominik Lorenz were not the only resignations with Forbes reporting that a number of executives were also part of the exodus. Finanical difficulties are also thought to be plaguing the company.
The three German researchers created Stable Diffusion while at university and it was only after Stable Diffusion was published did Stability AI became involved.
“Stability, as far as I know, did not even know about this thing when we created it,” Björn Ommer, the professor who supervised the researchers, has said on record. “They jumped on this wagon only later on.”
British-Bangladesh Mostaque has proved to be a controversial character with accusations that he exaggerated his educational achievements; exaggerated his links to Amazon Web Services; and outright invented partnerships with UNESCO, OECD, WHO, and World Bank.
Most recently, Stability AI was accused of an attack on AI image generator rival Midjourney when accounts tied to the company attempted to “grab all the prompt and image pairs in the middle of the night” with the alleged attack temporarily bringing down Midjourney’s service.
In its statement, Stability AI thanked Mostque for his “leadership and relentless commitment to Stability AI and the open source movement.”
Mostaque adds, “I am proud two years after bringing on our first developer to have led Stability to hundreds of millions of downloads and the best models across modalities. I believe strongly in Stability AI’s mission and feel the company is in capable hands. It is now time to ensure AI remains open and decentralised.”
The company is now looking for a new CEO but in the meantime has appointed its Chief Operating Officer, Shan Shan Wong, and its Chief Technology Officer, Christian Laforte, as co-CEOs.